David, 54, is one of hundreds of farmers who have been forced to take the heart-breaking decision to sell up.

Even at the most efficient farms, milk costs around 30p per litre to produce – yet David and thousands of other farmers like him are paid as little as 16p a litre. It doesn’t take a mathematical genius to work out that they can’t carry on for ever.

“It has been a really tough decision to sell up,” he says. “I have spent night after night walking around the farm looking at the stock before they went.

“The milk price is so low, and the banks don’t like lending to businesses who are losing money, which I can understand.

“There is no support from the Government. I think some of the people in power should have a week on dairy farms and see how much work gets put into it.

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“I couldn’t afford to pay the staff to work for me so I was doing more and more. It got that I was doing 17 to 18 hours every day. You can’t carry on like that.”

Sadly David’s story is far from unique. In 2005, Britain had more than 14,500 dairy farms – today there are just over 9,500. According to the National Farmers Union , 277 dairy farmers sold up in the past year.

Farmers blame the world economy, a global milk glut and sanctions on Russia, as well as profit-raking supermarkets.

Falling milk prices and sanctions on Russia have caused a crisis (Image: Getty)

David said: “You can’t keep borrowing money to keep trying to farm. Somebody told me he had to borrow £200,000 to carry on farming for 12 months, and if the milk price went up to 30p that day, it would take him 10 years to get that money back. The pressure is absolutely horrendous.

“The supermarkets need to make profit, so do the transport companies, and then the poor old farmer is at the bottom of the chain and he gets whatever is left.”

Even NFU dairy board chairman Michael Oakes, who runs a dairy farm on the outskirts of Birmingham, isn’t sure he will still be in business this time next year.

He says it is a global problem, with China and oil-producing countries buying less dairy as their economies have taken a hit.

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“The industry is almost bleeding to death slowly,” he says. “It is probably the worst period we have ever had in any farmer’s living memory.

“We’ve had a continuous two years of downward prices.

“Most farmers are getting about 35% less for their milk than they were two years ago and there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Overdrafts are going up, people are borrowing money off family members, cashing in pensions.

Dairy farms are going to the wall at a frightening rate (Image: Getty)

“There are going to be lots of casualties, not just in the UK but throughout the world. You don’t realise things that happen in other parts of the world will have an effect on a farmer in Derbyshire.

“We’ve got to promote the ­Britishness of our product and build our relationship with our consumer.

“Morrisons put a product on the shelf that people could pay more for to support British farmers and the sales were really good, so there is a loyalty and we have got to build on that.”

Leaving the EU will also have an impact. David Gibson was ­originally worried about how Brexit could affect the industry, but is now ­optimistic it might help.

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“I think coming out of the EU has seen the industry pick up a bit,” he says. “The fall of the pound has actually seen the price of milk being pushed up by a penny or so.”

Farms are having to diversify just to keep going. Some are hosting music festivals, opening adventure playgrounds, glamping sites, quad biking tracks or tea rooms, hosting weddings or rearing unusual ­livestock such as llamas.

By 2014, 58% of the nation’s farms had some form of diversified activity, making up 19% of income from farm businesses.

Just 10 miles from David, his friend Bob Marsden is weathering the storm – just. Thorpe Farm has been in his family for 150 years but had to diversify years ago to pay off debts. His farm is in the heart of tourist hotspot the Peak District, so his parents opened up farm bunkhouses as hostels.

Now as well as the dairy farm it has an ice cream parlour and coffee shop, and sells its Hope Valley ice cream to 100 outlets. They also let visitors in to see the state-of-the-art robot cow milking system.

Bob is part of the Arla farmer-owned milk cooperative. He gets around 20p a litre for his milk – but the other parts of his business are much more profitable.

He says: “From our coffee machine I get £9 per litre, and in the ice cream shop we get £16 a litre. It is a no-brainer.”

But with the dairy farm still the heart of his business, producing just under a million litres of milk a year, the low milk price is having a devastating effect.

Bob, 43, says: “We haven’t had a drought anywhere in the world for the last two years so currently there is more milk than there has been. It is all about supply and demand.

“But what’s really killing us is the Ukraine crisis. When we put the sanctions on Russia, they banned our dairy imports and that was a huge market for the European dairy sector. We’re paying the price for the Government’s position on that. It’s never been as bad as it is now in agriculture.”

In the same village as Bob another farm is surviving, again thanks to diversification.

Hardhurst, run by Sue and Philip ­Creswick, used to be a sheep and dairy farm but Philip’s grandad added a camping and caravan site. Now the farm is purely a sheep farm, as dairy wasn’t paying, but the tourism side subsidises that.

Sue, 58, says: “We definitely wouldn’t have survived without the campsite – the sheep farming is about 20% of our business now. I love cows but it was totally ­uneconomical to keep them on our farm.”

With David Gibson’s farm and family home now up for sale, he has no idea what the future holds.

“I just want a reasonable standard of living,” he says. “I’m quite happy to work. My wife works full time as a community nurse and that pays for our food and house.

“I just love farming. Once it’s in your blood, it is in your blood. If we’re not careful there’s going to be no agriculture left in this country. The countryside is what it is through farmers and if we don’t look after it, it will become a wilderness.”

Robot ends 4am rises and boosts welfare

Each farm has a certain number of robots, one for about 50 cows. Most farms on average have 100 to 120 cows. Each wears a collar with a microchip and when their udders are full they are trained to wander over to the machine.

The machine senses which cow it is because of the chip, lets it in and uses a sensor system to put each sucker on each udder.

What’s good about the robot is someone doesn’t need to get up at 4am to milk the cows. It’s also better for cattle welfare as cows go in when they’re ready, so the farmer is then free to do more checks on the animals’ health in the day. Lots of people are embracing the system.